Author of "The Type B Manager: Leading Successfully in a Type A World" (Prentice Hall Press). Publishers Weekly has called the book "an excellent resource for leaders who don’t fit the mold, and for upper managers who need to fill leadership positions." My background: I retired in 2012 from the corporate world with over two decades of Fortune 500 front-line and executive management experience, most of it in Communications and Marketing. I spent the next couple of years thinking about, researching and writing "The Type B Manager." I've long been interested as a practitioner in the subject of management, both good and bad, effective and ineffective, what works and what doesn't. Graduate of Harvard College, with an MBA from Western New England University. Founder and principal of Howling Wolf Management Training, LLC. You can follow me on Forbes, Twitter and Facebook, and I have a blog, "Mind of the Manager," on Psychology Today.

Climate Change Is Here. How Companies Are Preparing For It

A coffee plantation. Starbucks is working with coffee farmers to prepare for climate change by conserving water resources, soil resources and biological diversity. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Climate change has arrived. 2012 is in the books as one of the warmest years on record, and extreme costly weather events are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Against this backdrop, the debate is slowly migrating from partisan wrangling over the existence of climate change to more productive efforts to think creatively about how to prepare for it.

My interest here is not to make the case for climate change – many far more knowledgeable than I have already done so – but to show how some f0rward-thinking companies are taking tangible, constructive steps to anticipate it and mitigate its impact. This new but growing discipline is known as “Climate Resilience.”

The 40-page report is too full of valuable information to quickly summarize, but I want to quote generously from it here to give readers – particularly within especially vulnerable business sectors – a flavor of it. Such sectors include (for reasons related to their direct weather exposure) Food and Agriculture, Utilities, and Manufacturers with substantial supply chains. The report begins:

“The climate is changing and impacts on businesses and communities are already being felt. Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and more severe weather events are being observed. Nine out of ten companies have suffered weather-related impacts in the past three years, and most have seen an intensification of such impacts. Meanwhile, communities on which businesses depend for their supplies, workforce, sales, and more are being affected. A change in climate will lead to a changing business environment and changing community relationships…

“This guide introduces the Business ADAPT (analyze, develop, assess, prioritize and tackle) tool. The tool follows a step-by-step climate resilience framework inspired by existing good practice risk management models. Many businesses will benefit from using the Business ADAPT tool, including businesses with these characteristics:

- Have long-lived fixed assets

- Use utility and infrastructure networks

- Secure natural resources

- Create extensive supply/distribution networks

-Require finance and investment…

“Corporate climate resilience is a relatively new field, yet good examples of multinational and medium-sized companies taking action to minimize the implications of a changing climate do exist. Readers will find many illustrative examples of climate resilience in action in this report.”

Among the cases described are Starbucks, Levi Strauss & CoLevi Strauss & Co. and Swiss Re – all in very different industries, but all having climate change exposure, and all taking actions to begin to manage their risks. Brief examples:

Starbucks works with Conservation International to “promote environmental leadership” among its coffee growers in countries including Costa Rica and Rwanda. Such leadership can include conservation of water, soil and biological diversity. Simple actions such as building coffee shade canopy covers can help farmers prepare for a future with possibly hotter temperatures and scarcer water.

Levi Strauss & Co., dependent on cotton for its apparel products, is part of a Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), which seeks to improve the way the cotton is grown globally. BCI, for instance, helps cotton farmers with techniques that enable them them to use less pesticides and water, such as increasing the development of border crops and irrigation systems.

Swiss Re, a global provider of reinsurance and insurance, works innovatively with “cash-poor farmers” in Ethiopia. The farmers have an option “to work for their insurance premiums by engaging in community-identified projects to reduce risk and build climate resilience, such as improved irrigation or soil management.”

When I was in the corporate world with MassMutual Financial Group, for years I was a member of a team that went by a variety of names (Disaster Recovery, Business Recovery, etc.), but whose purpose was always the same: to mitigate risk by helping the organization prepare for the unexpected – backing up systems, making arrangements for alternate work sites and so forth… in case these were ever needed. While this preparatory work sometimes seemed repetitive and dull (as it’s usually not immediately needed), over time I’ve come to appreciate just how critically important the function is.

As the near-catastrophic financial events of 2008 demonstrated, it’s hard to imagine a more important leadership task – whatever your business – than managing risk.

Climate change is, among many other things, a vast global business risk.

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Wrong! Only you lazy copy and paste journalists and politicians have ever said climate change crisis “WILL” happen. Science has never said it will happen, only could happen. Science only agrees it is real, not a real crisis: “Climate change is real and is happening and “COULD” cause a climate crisis.” How could this be a real crisis when the world of science refuses to say it “WILL” happen, just “might” happen? Not one single IPCC warning isn’t qualified with “maybes”. HELP MY HOUSE COULD BE ON FIRE MAYBE? And why are the millions of good and honest people in the global scientific community not acting like their kids were condemned to the greenhouse gas ovens along with our kids? REAL planet lovers welcome the good news of crisis being exaggerated.

Thank you for reading and commenting on this important issue. In this post I wasn’t referring to climate change as a “crisis” (though I believe one can easily make that argument), but as a “risk” – a substantive business risk that it makes good sense for companies to consider. I’ll let the scientists provide the science. Feel free to jump in here…

So you have your own personal definition of climate change? It’s not a crisis to you? Too funny! You can’t have a little climate crisis, outside of Harry Potter movies so just call it climate variation and stop spewing this needless CO2 panic to my kids please. Can you do that?

Not one single IPCC warning says it “WILL” happen and none of their warnings are not qualified with “maybe” and “could be” and…..etc. Only you lazy copy and paste news editors and politicians are saying any climate crisis “WILL” happen. Science never has. Prove me wrong!

Victor, All you have made us aware of is that you are stuck on stupid when it comes to finding an issue on which to write. Write about the coming wave of commie regulations intended to destroy your and my way of life.

Again, I see this not as a political issue but simply a meteorological one. Companies like Starbucks, Levi Strauss and Swiss Re are just acting rationally, based on the data they have, to protect their business interests.

Mr. Lipman, it is great to see increasing attention to climate change from the business community, and thank you for writing about it. I believe you are correct: We are slowly moving towards more productive public discourse on what we should do about climate change.

With your permission, I’d like to make readers aware of an upcoming forum designed with that in mind. The forum is entitled Climate Change: Values, National Security, and Free Enterprise, to be held on the evening of April 4th and live-streamed. Please see the following URL for details: http://www2.ca.uky.edu/environment-files/ccflyervincelli.pdf.

With luck, our audience will include members of the business community, as we did schedule a speaker to present free-enterprise perspectives on this issue.